Tag Archives: child abuse

Post navigation

Sometimes life can seem difficult under present circumstances, but you can direct yourself toward the life experience you desire by acquiring positive spiritual knowledge. The initiation of positive changes is one of the best ways to provide yourself with the unique experiences that can strengthen you as you adapt to meet new challenges that help both you and your spirit to progress toward a positive state.

Resolving issues in your life can take time and effort to accomplish. It’s easy to imagine that remaining in the same predicament won’t make spiritual negativity or any other kind of negativity go away. Rather than continuing on an unintended trajectory in life, you can get help to change direction by working with your spirit.

From my own perspective, I learned to utilize positive higher-level skills that helped me to overcome the negative onslaught that typically accompanies life-bettering endeavors. After many years of hesitation, four years ago I made a legal claim against the RC Church to expose the perverted actions of a previously undetected pedophile priest that had sexually assaulted me as a child. Although there was a great deal of anxiety caused by churning up all the memories of the abuse and its effects on my early life, the telling of my story helped me to remove the balance of the lingering spiritual negativity.

Most often, fear and shame force victims into silence. Sexual abuse at any age causes great spiritual impairment, as the direct and indirect consequences increasingly inundate a survivor with negativity. However, the growing number of people who have been coming forward to report sexual abuse or harassment brings strength to all those who have remained silent. Immediately before the #MeToo movement went viral last year, I had just completed legal proceedings against the church. Like so many people, I had been fearful of the difficult process of confronting the church’s protective and scheming lawyers, who were rudely skeptical of my story.

A spirit gains strength when its body fights fear. This week’s grand jury report that exposed the decades-long activities of predatory priests in Pennsylvania make me feel elated that so many survivors have finally come forward! Innocent survivors that should never be ashamed and fearful. However, the ever-silent and complicit Vatican officials’ feeble responses indicate their unwillingness to properly deal with the pedophilia that runs rampant in their institution. It’s essential for all survivors to fight back against any criminal who destroyed their joy and initiated difficulty in their life.

When you strive for a positive future, self-love brings you increasingly closer into harmony with your spirit. When you stop loving yourself, due to fear, shame, or guilt, you diminish the strength of your spirit and risk being overwhelmed by spiritual negativity. If you’ve suffered any abuse in your lifetime, it’s finally time to come forward and talk about it, so you can fight back, and initiate the change you need to return to a state of self-love.

Everything happens for a reason and, as an innocent child, I had absolutely no spiritual knowledge. Now I kick ass at the spiritual level without fear and with total confidence in my spirit’s wisdom and ability!

You can facilitate your own spiritual progress by loving yourself more each day and by standing up for yourself – especially against the negativity that makes you feel fearful and vulnerable.

✰ˆ◡ˆ✰

I welcome and value your input ~ Please feel free to comment!

I work across distance to extend my higher-level knowledge to you, wherever you are in the world! Learn how great life is when you work with a positively oriented spirit!

Our individual uniqueness is the most incredible part of our physical existence. As diverse as the heavenly bodies in the cosmos, we truly are a remarkable menagerie on our planet!

As children we naturally love ourselves and celebrate how different we are from everyone else. However, many of us suffer from bullying or abuse as children and, for the rest of our lives, we struggle to deal with the consequences at all levels of our being.

Once we’ve been bullied or abused, we have to go through the mental and emotional processes that result from the events that occurred. We suffer in silence and struggle to fit in, as the lingering negative memories deteriorate our ability to exercise self-love.

In the meantime, we aren’t even aware that we’ve accepted higher-level influences that interfere with our relationship with our spirit. The early onset of spiritual negativity can attract a continuous stream of negativity over our lifetime that causea the self-imposition of ever-deteriorating self-esteem.

By working with your spirit, you’ll view your precious self in much more positive terms! You’ll understand that the ongoing interference that was causing you to think less of yourself was nurtured by the negativity that you had been accumulating over the course of your lifetime.

Once you start refusing and counteracting higher-level negativity, your efforts will have a trickle-down effect that continually refreshes your enthusiasm for your individuality. Your positive thoughts and emotions will become the norm and positive energy will emanate throughout all levels of your being.

You can sensationalize your self-esteem by allowing yourself to…

Love and accept yourself totally for who you are!

Quit comparing yourself to others – they’re not you!

Forgive yourself for ever having believed you weren’t always awesome!

Refrain from reflecting on what could have or should have been!

Shed the shame and reclaim your worth and dignity!

Believe in yourself and expand on your positive points!

Embrace your ever-evolving uniqueness!

By working with your spirit in the most positive terms, the luminosity of your spirit’s Light* as it progresses will bring a more sophisticated perspective to your life in the context of your grander existence in the cosmos.

From the awkwardness of shyness to the extreme anxiety of terror, all fear is essentially the same.

Wild animals instinctively assess their position whenever they encounter an unknown or dangerous situation. Likewise we, as humans, instantaneously assess for a fight or flight response and our fear can either freeze us in terror or cause courage to emerge.

For many of us the lingering memories of childhood experiences set off alarms when we’re faced with threatening circumstances. Many of us were bullied, abused or continually cautioned with negatives like: “Don’t…! ” or “You’ll never…!” Such phrases seem to crop up whenever we’re faced with challenges to our wellbeing.

As a consequence, the negative memories stored over time at the physical, mental and higher levels contribute to self-doubt and indecisiveness. These limitations on our ability to adapt healthfully to change inhibit us from reaching our full potential.

On top of the physical and mental effects of fear, spiritual negativity is attracted during distressing situations and we carry that accumulation into adulthood. Fearful events often cause a child to open up to one or more negatively oriented spirits that remain with them throughout their lifetime.

Fear is the greatest of negative tools, and built up spiritual negativity amplifies the effect of past memories and the perceived threat of a challenging situation. Fear can be real or imagined and sensible solutions are best prompted when we’re steadily cool, calm and collected.

Last summer, I was confronted with what might have been an alarming experience in a grocery store parking lot, but my ongoing work with my spirit proved very effective. A woman’s plastic shoe became stuck under the accelerator of her SUV, causing her to race toward me with such force that she ran into another SUV and that vehicle struck another. The SUV missed me by only a few inches, yet I maintained my presence of mind, called 911 and headed home, remarkably composed.

Because I know how to work with my spirit, I automatically refused the perceived negativity as soon as I heard the screeching sound of the driver spinning her tires. So my spirit and I were already counteracting the wave of negative energy directed toward me before the SUV sped past just behind me.

Goose Spit, Vancouver Is. Canada~Photo by M. Barclay

The more higher-level awareness you acquire, the better prepared you’ll be when fear strikes. Instead of allowing the onset of bodily chemical processes to further complicate your response to simple stressful situations or major catastrophic events, your higher self and spirit can help you to go forward in confidence.

By going within to work with your spirit, you’ll take charge of all aspects of your being and bring your spiritual knowledge into play. You’ll be more composed to better assess fear-triggering situations so you’re prepared to respond rationally.

Getting rid of fear and self-doubt are only part of what working with your spirit can add to your life…just imagine how strong and confident you’ll become as you progress!

Isn’t it great that there’s such a thing as Prevent Child Abuse Awareness Month? As more adults become aware that children are forced to hide, cover up and keep secret their abuse, hopefully many more children will be able to trust and be given the help they need to end their suffering.

As a survivor of childhood abuse myself, I became so much more aware of its pervasiveness through my spiritual/natural/quantum healing work. While shocking and sad at the same time, the plight of an innocent 2-year-old girl especially brought home the treachery. Her parents had brought her to see Leo and me because she refused to eat and had stopped talking. As a first step we helped her to start working with her spirit and then turned to her parents to ask what the circumstances were at home. Both parents worked so, while the mother worked part-time in the morning, her brother-in-law stayed home with their daughter. As we continued to find out more about the little girl’s withdrawal and self-destructive behavior, to the surprise of the young parents it became evident that their daughter’s change had coincided with the arrival of the brother-in-law in their household a few weeks earlier. After the brother-in-law was removed from their home, the little girl started talking again and was eating normally.

However, several months later we received a visit from the family again, after they had been overseas visiting with relatives and the little girl was refusing to talk and eat again. After reconnecting her with her spirit and while the parents assured Leo that they had watched closely over their daughter during their trip, I intuitively took the little girl into another room where we sat quietly looking at pictures in a National Geographic magazine. The little girl was quite relaxed with me until I opened one page where there was a photo of an older man sitting on a porch in a rocking chair. She started yelling and poked and hit at the picture, with tears welling up in her eyes.

I quickly took the little girl back into the room where her parents were. When I showed them the picture that made the little girl so angry, her mother said that it looked just like one of their relatives that they had been visiting. As the parents searched their memory about the man’s interaction with their daughter, they remembered one afternoon when she had been napping and the man had been upstairs alone with her. Once again, the poor little darling had suffered another abuse event while among the very people she should have been able to trust most.

Not only do children suffer physically, mentally and emotionally from abuse, they suffer spiritually at the highest level of their being. Abuse cuts children off from the inherent protection afforded by their spirit.

Most often when a child encounters abuse, the spirit they have always known will exit their body and will not return, because a negatively oriented spirit will take over. Without the relationship with their spirit that they have always known, a child feels cut off from their essential self that would otherwise help them to navigate through their life. Some children are stronger and adapt more readily than others, but too many are left without their basic defense mechanism. Giving a child back their original spirit or a positively oriented spirit has such amazing results! They’re able to once again find balance within themselves, but still need help to end the abuse at the physical level.

Child abuse is rampant throughout the world, one of the main reasons why I refer to it as a negative planet. Protecting children at all levels is essential to give them the safety and security that allows them to focus on the positive aspects of their lives. Unfortunately, parents often find it hard to prevent their child from being vulnerable to abuse, especially if they’ve been the victims of abuse in their own childhood.

In an ideal world, no child would ever be abused but, in our reality, a child should at the very least never be left in vulnerable circumstances physically or spiritually.

As children we develop our individual sense of how to interact with others and, depending on our spiritual orientation, the results can be quite different. Some children learn a sense of positive morality from their experiences, while others accept the negatively-charged energy they receive from their mistreatment of others.

When I was only 2 years old I committed my first negative action against another living being, when I was unjustly punished and reacted in a surprising way. (I have a rather vivid memory of certain early childhood events, and this one still stands out.) My brother (who was still crawling) and I were playing on the floor beside his crib when he reached over and spilled the baby powder, just like he’d done the day before. The first time he spilled the powder my mother came into the room and swatted me on the behind, because she assumed that I had done it. This time, I wasn’t going to get blamed, so I remember biting my brother on the forearm and, while he burst into a loud cry, I ran into my parents’ bedroom and hid deep inside the closet so that my mother couldn’t find me. In my toddler’s mind, it was a split-second reaction to hurt my brother in response to my fear of being punished again because of his actions. (Poor little guy, with my teeth marks on his arm!)

A few years later, when I was 6 years old, I remember how some of the older kids used to get a big charge out of swinging us around by the arms and then letting us go. As we went flying off in a slingshot effect then tumbled to the ground with a dazed look on our faces, they laughed in glee. One day, when no one was around, I remember taking the plunge myself. I swung one of the 5-year-old neighbor girls around and let her go. As she started to cry because she was so dazed and, most probably with hurt feelings, I felt a great sense of guilt and remorse. It was the first and last time I would ever treat another human being that way. From that child came my own cries; her grief was my own. Although I apologized at the time, and I remember apologizing to her again when we were older, the girl never even remembered the event. That experience gave me the insight never to be mean to anyone again, and was probably the cornerstone of my moral development.

So what makes a child mean? From a spiritual perspective, if I had a negatively oriented spirit, I probably never would have felt any remorse about hurting either my little brother or the neighbor girl. As a 2-year-old, my actions were merely for self-preservation with no sense of right or wrong but, with a little more brain power at age 6, I was able to make a positive moral judgment that changed my behavior.

However, a child with a negatively oriented spirit might have enjoyed the negative energy created during their mistreatment of another living being, because they might have already experienced abuse or brutality as normal. Their spirit would have grown more negative as the abuse events continue, in their role as both a recipient victim and an emerging perpetrator. The abusive actions of a child attract negative energy/spirits that fuel their desire to continue to hurt others, as negative spirits feed off the negative energy that is generated. A child who bullies others is a child in trouble at all levels.

From the perspective of a child who’s on the receiving end of bullying, they’re becoming conditioned not to resist or to fight back. The first time a bullying event occurs a child becomes afraid, the first step to the acceptance of future incidents. At the spiritual level, the bullied child starts to receive negative spiritual input that originates with and perpetuates the fear response. Even if their spirit was more positively oriented at the start, it will inevitably lose ground to the overwhelming influx of negativity created by the bullying.

One of my greatest joys is to help a child by introducing them to their spiritual self and the Light*, so that they can gain a fundamental understanding of their individuality from a spiritual perspective. Learning to work with their spirit brings them so much self-esteem and mindfulness of their extraordinary potential to overcome such obstacles as the impact of bullying. They quickly see that they have allowed bullying to affect them and that they need to refuse the spiritual negativity that perpetuates the abusive behavior on both ends. For kids of all ages:

I believe in myself. I never doubt myself.
I am a winner and I am fully capable of succeeding in all that I choose. ~Leo Jean

The spiritual motivation behind bullying, criminal actions of all kinds and the calamity of war is the same: Negative spirits feed off of the negative energy that negative actions generate. Hopefully more people will turn inward with a positive spiritual outlook, so that more positive energy is generated at all levels on our planet.

Negative thoughts are constantly bombarding all of us as we navigate through our lives, but some people are tormented because they have so little power to refuse them. When someone is prone to persistent negative thoughts, there is most often a spiritual reason that prevents them from overcoming their persuasion.

Every living being on our planet is born with the instinct to survive, and each individual has the remarkable capacity to overcome a myriad of negative obstacles. However, when one’s resolve has been compromised by the intrusion of negative energy/spirits, it diminishes their capacity to resist the impact of higher level negativity.

Why are some people more sensitive than others, so that they seem to attract and absorb more negativity? Although it’s partly due to their level of perception and intuitive knowledge of how to deal with it, I think there’s a spiritual reason at its core. When a child is bothered at the higher level, he or she will simply say: “No!” and it’s usually enough to stop the negative influence but, if a child is subjected to abuse, they’re susceptible to being overwhelmed by the negative energies/spirits that are attracted to such events.

When I met Leo Jean, he told me how he had helped over 40 suicidal teenagers by giving them a more positive outlook on their life. In the few years prior to our meeting, kids from the community used to ask Leo if they could talk with him; all of them had been abused in one way or the other; and Leo helped them to identify with how he had overcome his own difficult experiences to discover there was a way past their own problems. Leo says of the tough times: “It’s just a passage of time.”

It’s alarming to me why so many people seriously contemplate committing suicide because, to me, it’s like committing self-murder and I could never hurt anyone, let alone myself. In my entire life, despite everything I went through, I only once had the thought of ending it all. I was 16 at the time, and it was just a fleeting thought. But I made sure that I immediately removed it from my mind, because it stunned me that I would have such a negative idea. I’ve always believed that in life there must always be something bright and positive to move toward on the other side of any difficulty.

So where did that thought come from? Was there a part of me that was so negative that I would resort to such destruction? Or, at a time when I was emotionally distraught, did the thought come from outside myself and I mistook it for my own? I think it was the latter. It was only during my work with Leo that I was able to fully understand that the energy of such a negative thought comes from the higher level and that I had intuitively refused it.

The first time I heard of someone being taunted to self-destruct was over 20 years ago, when a feisty 80-year-old woman came to see us because she was tormented by a cacophony of voices that were continuously urging her to throw herself from her 5-storey balcony. More recently was the healing across distance of a very sensitive 20-year-old woman, Lisa*, that had allowed the energies of others to affect her so much that she was unable to turn off her absorption of negativity. Both women intuitively knew the source of their self-destructive tendencies was spiritual, and they were brave enough to fight back for their lives.

Five years before she contacted us, Lisa had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. She suffered from extremely painful headaches and was taking medication that helped to lessen, but never removed, the pain. Lisa explained that she felt she no longer had any “barriers to the negative energy emitted by negative people” and felt that, if it continued, it would lead her to her “ultimate destruction – suicide”. Yet she went on to describe how she felt those thoughts could not be her own, because she was a very positive, creative and outgoing person. As a gifted performer, her greatest desire was to be able to stand on stage without the debilitating pain.

Not only had Lisa opened to several spirits years earlier but, as time went on, more of her spiritual openings became jammed open, amplifying her thoughts of self-destruction. Without a positively oriented spirit to help her at the spiritual level, Lisa had been unable to refuse the onslaught of negativity and had become more susceptible to it. She had taken time off from university and was living at home; her father was paying for her healing, but we never spoke to him. She convinced us that she would be ready and able to refuse when we worked with her over the phone.

Once her damaged chakras were repaired and she was closed to negative energy/spirits, Lisa found that, by working with her new positively oriented spirit, she was finally able to close to the destructive energy that she felt around certain people. During the next month, while she was receiving daily spiritual support, she learned to refuse the negative energies that used to engulf her at university and in other public places. Her headaches stopped; she was off to work in another country with friends for the summer; and she looked forward to returning to school in the fall.

A strong resolve and a positively oriented spirit provide the refusal power that’s needed to defeat self-destructive and other negative thoughts that can be emanating from a higher level source.

*Name made up to protect her privacy; no significant details that would identify this person are mentioned.

Just as a child feels terrified when separated from their parents, in a similar way a spirit can experience frustration when separated from its body.

Most people assume that their spirit (soul) is happily nestled within them, but this isn’t always the case. When a spirit is constantly ignored because there is no communication between it and its body, it gradually weakens. If this persists over a prolonged period of time, a spirit becomes vulnerable to stronger spirits that are attracted to their body.

When I was a child, I was never given any information about my spirit, other than my immortal soul would be sent to hell if I didn’t worship a deity in the way that I was instructed. Gladly this blatant scare tactic didn’t stop me from wondering if it were all true. I was told that my spirit belonged to someone else but, once I learned that it really belongs to me, it changed my whole outlook on life.

A spirit depends on its body to interact with it and, when we’re small children, we inherently know how to do this. Then, as we reach a certain point, we tend to forget as we start to follow the instructions of those who are in charge of our lives.

Most of us are taught at an early age to relinquish the plight of our spirit to a deity that has been conceptualized by an institution and believe we never have to worry about it again. Religions take control over one’s spirituality, while working with one’s spirit presents the ultimate freedom.

As the pressures of life mount, people can actually open up to allow less-than-beneficial spirits into their form through their spiritual apertures. This initially happens as children and teenagers experience emotional overload in response to the trauma of mistreatment such as beatings, molestation, rape, bullying and other childhood abuse that causes intense emotions such as:

Fear Guilt Hatred Anxiety Despair
Anger Sadness Self-pity Jealousy

Once a child opens a spiritual opening related to an emotional upheaval, they’re vulnerable to the influence of aimless spirits that hang around, looking for an opportunity to invade a child through an open chakra. Then the spirit can actually ‘kick out’ the child’s original spirit. Sometimes the original spirit will remain around the child, regardless of whether they’re acknowledged or not, but often the spirit will be on its way.

As the child grows older, there can be a continuous disconnect between their spiritual self and their physical self, since the spirit they house isn’t the one that they were born with or they have allowed more than one spirit within. Since no Light* spirit (i.e. a spirit with positive knowledge) would enter a person in this manner, the spirit is always negatively oriented. Depending on the level of negative intensity of the spirit, there can be ongoing problems at all levels, including self-destructive tendencies.

What I’ve learned through my work is that most people are capable of adapting to a spirit that is not their original, but there are always side effects. My work entails bringing either the person’s original spirit back or finding a suitable spirit that is vibrationally compatible. In either case, the spirit has to be positively oriented. In this way, most quickly find the missing part of themselves that brings them a sense of purpose and meaning.

Some people are detached from their spirit all their life and never learn how to interact with it. Apart from making life essentially better, the most fundamental of all reasons that a person should choose to consciously interact and progress with their spirit is so that their spirit can move on into the positive realm when their body expires.

When a spirit can interact with its body, its purpose can be fulfilled as it will progress in its journey. When a body can interact with its spirit, it makes that progress possible.

Children would seem to be the most vulnerable to the influence of spiritual negativity, but they are actually very adept at combating negative interference. From their neutral innocent standpoint, young children are inherently sensitive to the spiritual realm and already understand how to deal with it.

From early in life children are enticed to interact with beings that exist in higher dimensions and, while adults call this imagination, it is very real. Sometimes, when a child senses the presence of an inter-dimensional being, it will be in the form of something that begs their trust, like a friendly ghost, an angel or a beautiful fairy. Rather than immediately accept the impact of such an encounter, a child’s first reaction should be to refuse and throw Light* to hit the being. If the being is positive, the Light will give it energy and it will sparkle its own spiritual Light. If the being is negative, it will retreat or vanish when hit with the Light. If more children were aware of how to use the Light in self-defense, fewer would suffer from the interference of negative beings that feed off of their energy.

As creatures of instinct, we all have the choice to react with fear or defiance when threatened at all levels of our being. If you react in confidence by refusing first, fear will not be given the opportunity to present itself and break down your defenses. A child’s imagination can yield powerful results when counteracting negativity, as children are constantly being challenged in their efforts to remain in a positive state.

An example from my early childhood might help to explain how a child whose spirit is helping them to resist the pervasiveness of negativity can stand up to a coercive invitation to interact in a negative realm. While I don’t remember most childhood dreams, this one stands out significantly.

When I was eight years old, I awoke in a dream to find what I recognized to be a ‘witch’ sitting up beside me in my bed. (She looked like the witch from the “Mighty Mouse” cartoon.) When I saw her, I was petrified and stood up on the bed to face her. The witch told me that she had brought me a gift, and held out a necklace made of round stones that I should put on. When I refused her gift, she told me that she had come to take me away with her. When I kept telling her that I wasn’t going to go anywhere with her, she wouldn’t take “No!” for an answer. As she tried to break my free will, I remained steadfast and didn’t allow her to break my resolve. As a child I perceived the being that appeared to me as a witch to be ‘bad’ and I was not going to give in to her.

Finally, after what seemed like a very long time (and was probably only a few split seconds), I thought of something. I told her that, if I were forced to go with her, I would have to say good-bye to my parents. The ‘witch’ agreed and allowed me to get out of bed and go downstairs to say my farewells. When I returned, I brought my father with me, wielding a gun. The witch disappeared and I woke up, trembling, in the tranquility of my bed. My father often worked nights, so he wasn’t even home, nor had he ever owned a gun.

Although at the time I didn’t consciously know how to work with my spirit, my spirit knew how to help me to use my imagination as a tool to properly refuse while in my dream state. Many of our higher-level encounters occur in the dream state, so it’s important to learn how to bring positive knowledge to all levels of our being. If I had accepted the offer of the necklace, I would have accepted some sort of inter-dimensional loyalty to that being. If I had accepted the summons to leave my body, I would have accepted and succumbed to whatever unknown terms went along with that agreement. Fortunately, even as a child, I chose to be positive. After that point, I went through the hardest part of my life, but I still refused to give in to all the negativity that continued to challenge me.

My spirit has been helping me all my life, but I had been conditioned to let go of that all-important connection to the highest part of myself. Thankfully, I reconnected with my spirit and will continue to learn and, hopefully, inspire others to work within with their own spirit.

My work with Leo Jean has brought me many lessons in how to deal with spiritual negativity, and next I’ll share the story of how a young man was tricked into responding to almost exactly the same enticement that I faced with the ‘witch’ in my dream.

The importance of self-forgiveness for survivors of childhood sexual abuse

Someone commented the other day that the hardest thing for her to do was to forgive herself. For those of us that were sexually abused as children, we bear the detrimental memories of those incomprehensible moments into adulthood. The negative memories and emotions build inside until they begin to manifest in ways that cause emotional, mental and physical illness. When I learned how to stop the momentum of the shame and guilt caused by early abuse events, I eventually emerged as the healthy balanced person I am today.

When I was really young, I really didn’t even understand what was happening to me, or that it was anything unusual, because I believe that I had been conditioned from a very early age to accept sexual abuse as a normal occurrence. After trying to report to my mother what had happened to me on one occasion and wasn’t believed, then being threatened into silence another time, I quickly learned that I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. I continued to keep all of it a secret.

By the time I reached puberty, I was being molested by people close to me. I was so shy that I had trouble expressing any romantic interests with boys my own age, so I never had any meaningful relationships. When I had what I thought was my first sexual encounter at age 16, I was humiliated when the 21-year-old man practically laughed out loud because I had told him that I was a virgin. After that incident I was accosted and raped by several older teenagers. What I never realized throughout any of this was that all this was happening because I had been abused as a young child. It just never connected. I never knew how to fight back to stop the abuse and was still afraid to tell others, for fear of not being believed or being ostracized for being a victim.

Soon after these events, I moved away to try and start a new life. Within me was the inkling of knowledge that I would one day find harmony in my life. But there seemed to be no way to stop the pattern of abuse that I had accepted. By my mid-20’s I had become a battered woman as my life kept spiraling downward. When I reached a crisis point, I finally looked for and found help from someone who made me look at myself in a whole new perspective.

At that point I was in a similar position as the lady that prompted me to post this today. Years ago, when it was suggested that I should forgive myself, it seemed almost impossible. My approach was to review the different aspects of how the abuse had affected me. I realized that I felt great shame, loss of dignity and very little self-esteem. My shyness and lack of confidence had prevented me from having meaningful relationships. Somehow, I even felt guilty because I had allowed the abuse to continue until it was life threatening. I had to reconcile with myself in order to remove those destructive emotional memories from my being.

In order to begin to forgive myself, I had to acknowledge that I was unique, that I had purpose and that I was worthy of happiness. And I had to believe it. Then I could forgive myself for having accepted the abuse, even though I really couldn’t have prevented it as a very young child. The best way for me to fight back against that breach of my free will was to believe that I could become the person that I truly am inside, and to eliminate the fear, guilt and other negative emotions that lingered from the abuse events and their aftermath.

Once I was able to accept myself as I was at that moment, it began a ripple effect. I was then able to forgive myself, and that enabled me to start loving myself. That’s when I accepted that I could interact with my spirit (soul) and started to work with it. I have regained my dignity and, when I look in the mirror, I see my inner beauty reflected back.

I still continue to forgive myself whenever I think, react or behave in ways that trouble me, in order to create a fresh starting point that allows me to once again move forward in a positive direction.

A recent episode of “Brad Melzer’s: Decoded” delved into the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I in 1978. The investigative crew opened up the suspicion that Vatican officials didn’t conduct a full and open investigation because the newly elected pope might have exposed some of the church’s secretive practices and corruption within its ranks. This topic always perks up my ears, since I’ve long been anticipating the unraveling of this hypocritical establishment that has recently faced the exposure of widespread sexual abuse of children by its clergy.

The team first looked into the fact that the Vatican is a sovereign state, so the pope’s death was subject only to an internal investigation. Some Italian prosecutors and at least one investigative journalist ended up murdered in the aftermath. Next they explored the fact that JPI was possibly a reformer and some speculated that he was about to out corruption inside the church. Before becoming pontiff, JPI had visited with the last remaining child who had witnessed the Fatima ‘miracle’ and had also been involved with the Vatican Bank in Venice. Apparently the well-meaning pontiff discovered that the prophecy was about his intention to reveal the infiltration of Freemasons into the church’s hierarchy, as well as corruption within the Vatican Bank.

In summary, Brad Melzer asked: “Who would’ve predicted the Vatican would end up laundering heroine money for the Mafia to cover up a Freemason banking scandal that ends up with the murder of the pope? Our Lady of Fatima.”

If the church is so corrupt, as has been proven beyond a doubt over the centuries, why do people continue their membership? The recent exposure of child abuse by the clergy makes it abundantly clear that no child is safe around their ‘celibate’ priests. Even with evidence of monetary corruption, people continue to contribute tax-free dollars to the Vatican’s ‘vow of poverty’. If it’s ever proven that Vatican officials murdered a pope and they used the ‘vow of obedience’ to cover it up, would people still believe in what this institution stands for? Does this make any sense?

Fear is the greatest tool of a negative regime and, while coercive practices are outlawed in most societies, they are at the root of most religious doctrines. From my perspective, as someone who broke away early in my life from the apparent hypocrisy of Catholicism, people are simply desperate for someone to look after their spirit (soul) after they die. As religious institutions are aware of this fateful fear, they offer it to anyone on this planet who is willing to accept that an organization could provide a secure position in the afterlife. Why would anyone trust the most precious part of their being to such a manmade institution?

When I see the billions of people that have lumped their spirits into the various religious organizations that divide our planet, I perceive an underlying spiritual battle that fuels their incessant demand for more members. Even the most seemingly benevolent religious organizations place spiritual impediments on their members to ensure that they will comply with the requirements of membership. The very notion of praying for someone else is a breach of the recipient’s free will.

The fact that the Catholic Church has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to suppress the public testimony of thousands of abuse victims is reason enough to avoid the church like the plague. I could express at length the contradictions, but I believe that anyone that has experienced such deliberate infractions of their free will already understands. I’m glad that the mainstream media is bringing to light such hypocrisy with such shows as “Decoded”, since so many are unable to believe it’s really true.

From my perspective, I had been searching for a way to fulfill my own spiritual needs, until I acknowledged that my spirit is a unique entity that is within me for my well-being and that I alone am responsible for its progress.

The other night I watched “Brad Meltzer’s Decoded” on the History Channel, which looked into the U. S. government’s cover up of UFO evidence. At the end of the show, one of the investigators divulged that, when he was eight years old, he had seen a UFO while traveling by car with his family. One of the other investigators said that, if they had known that at the beginning of their investigation, he would have thought that maybe his colleague was a little crazy. However, afterward he could just say: “That’s incredible!”

This response is indicative of how far we’ve come as human beings to respect the experiences of others without prejudgment. When someone reveals that they’ve seen a UFO, their credibility is immediately taken into question. Rather than just evaluating the details of the story, a person’s judgment and mental stability come into question.

When I was fifteen years old, I was contacted by a roomful of other-worldly beings who appeared on a small movie screen. Unlike the usual circumstances surrounding such events, such as when a lone person is traveling in a remote location, I was fully conscious in a public place full of adults and children. However, since I was the only subject of the communication, my friends advised me not to talk about it, or people would think I was crazy. So I remained silent for fifteen years, until I was able to tell someone that I trusted. Especially during my silence, I often wondered about the significance of being the object of the communication and if there would be any follow up. (See my post Early Flat Screen Presentation.)

Most people keep their alien contact or sightings secret, because of the skeptical reaction they anticipate. Over the ensuing years, they agonize over thoughts like: “Why me?” “Why was I selected as the recipient of that encounter?” “Does this have some significance in my life?” The investigator on “Decoded” stated that his UFO sighting stood out as one of the wonders of his childhood, yet he wouldn’t talk about it until after the show’s investigation had sufficiently backed up his credibility. Earlier on the show, Story Musgrave, a former NASA astronaut, pointed out the statistical certainty that intelligent life must exist on other planets and that some could be billions of years more technologically advanced than we are.

While living in California about fifteen years ago, I was also fortunate enough to be witness to a small group of craft passing over our property. Within a period of about two weeks Leo had called me outside several times to see some ships, but it took me too long to exit the house and courtyard to reach him on the hillside garden where he was working. Then, one day I threw down what I was doing and rushed outside, just in time to see three small craft moving westward about fifty feet above the house. They were rather small, about the size of small helicopters, but they were angular in shape and had small triangular wings. As I looked up at them flying in a v-shaped formation, they appeared to be made of a translucent material through which light passed, but I couldn’t see the interior or if they were manned. They passed by silently at no more than 20 mph. I was so excited as I watched them leave my field of vision over the hillside! Then, about thirty seconds later, a B-3 bomber came over us, and followed the path of the small crafts. The B-3’s engine was loud and it looked out of place compared to the advanced-looking crafts.

When I saw the UFO’s, I was with someone who wasn’t afraid to talk about what we had seen. The following day at the local coffee shop, Leo and I related our sighting to a couple of acquaintances, who had been pilots during World War II. The pilots asked questions about the structure, position, airspeed and heading of the craft. Although it felt strange to talk about what we had seen, we were talking to experts that understood the experience, and I’ve never questioned the event since.

Carrying the secret of childhood abuse is a similar burden to having witnessed a UFO event, although much more painful, of course. In both cases, you’re not supposed to tell or talk about your experience. You’re forced to carry around your secret, because of the fear that your story will trigger ridicule, reprisal or hurtful criticism. You might fear that, once your secret is revealed, you will be ostracized and that the skeptical reactions of even those closest to you might be too overwhelming and will ultimately change their perception of you as a person.

Just as the world is coming around to questioning the government cover up of UFO activity, the cover up practices of the abuse of children by religious organizations like the catholic church are finally being examined. When prestigious people like heads of state, military personnel or scientists state that they have witnessed UFO events, the public never questions their integrity; it was a remarkable experience. When celebrities reveal their childhood abuse, it’s seen as a factor in driving their success. For most of us, it’s a painful process of wondering if we’ll be perceived as dysfunctional or ‘damaged goods’. However, many more people are finally letting go of their fear of exposure.

As I’ve grown to love myself over the years, I’ve learned to talk about what happened to me, since withholding the information had been a negative impediment to my well-being. You are the product of your experiences so, if you keep events like a UFO sighting or childhood abuse a secret, the effects of not speaking out can be more harmful than just telling it like it is. Just pick your audience; there are some people out there who will listen without judging you. When you’re ready to let go, remember to refuse and release the negativity that you’ve been accepting. You’ll feel better, happier and much lighter!

NOTE: The illustrations posted here are only to suggest what the UFO that Leo and I saw looked like. It didn’t look like either sketch but more like a composite of both (the 2nd relating only to the translucency of the metal).

For most of my life I’ve quietly been a non-believer and it always amazes me how adults continue to believe in the creation and other stories that their religions narrate. While I still respect the choice that religious people make to believe in something as intangible, abstract and incredible as an omnipotent being that created everything from scratch, it would be less farfetched to worship the big bang. However, when you think about how children are conditioned and encouraged in very clever ways to follow the footsteps of their parents or government into a given religion, it’s not hard to understand why religious beliefs are so embedded into the minds of almost all human beings.

Recently a client mentioned to me how fortunate she felt because she had never been indoctrinated into any religious belief system as a child. I felt so pleased for her, because she had never been forced to participate in such an incarceration of the mind. I reflected on my own catholic upbringing that was filled with conditioning by experts. My earliest memory of being punished was when I was three years old. I had just returned from having attended church for the first time without my mother. Our neighbor, a staunch religious woman, had caught me “sweeping the floor” with my nose, and advised my mother to punish me immediately with a spanking. My mother questioned this advice but, because she was being pressured by one of her peers, duly spanked me for my irreverence. Even though I protested that all I had been doing was counting the boots of the people in the row in front of us!

After learning that I was to do everything exactly as everyone else did while in the house of cards, I became an observer. I used to watch everyone as they entered the church: walking up to the basin of holy water, dipping their finger in and genuflecting down on one knee as they crossed themselves with the blessed liquid. Everyone was so serious, all dressed up in their finery. If a young girl forgot to wear a hat or scarf over her head, a helpful mother would kindly provide her with a Kleenex and bobby pin to ensure her respectful appearance.

One Sunday there was an unexpected transition from the normal solemn mood of the mass. The organist, who happened to have been my first grade teacher, suddenly stood up while playing one of the livelier tunes that she usually played with such reverence. As she stood up, she looked around as though she was expecting everyone’s admiration. My mother who led the choir looked at her with some surprise. As the weeks went by, the organist continued to stand, then even smile and move in rhythm with the music as the pressure for attention mounted. To everyone’s relief, the poor woman was soon replaced, so that the somber monotony could resume.

It was around that time, when I was about 12 years old, that my mother announced that I was going to be able to take piano lessons. I was ecstatic at the prospect of finally learning to play the big old upright that stood in our dining room. Some of my older five sisters had started lessons, but never seemed to stay with it. For two and a half years, I was the happiest person around. I practiced piano every day before dinner, but was among the shiest of all pianists. When my mother brought company over and asked me to play, I would agree only if they all sat in the other room. I was so happy that I didn’t have to take lessons at the convent, where tales of yardsticks as weapons were wielded on faulty fingers. When I won first place at a regional piano competition, I was both proud and relieved because they had allowed me to focus while I played facing a wall.

However, soon my musical elation would be thoroughly quashed as religion interfered. One day as I was getting money for the bus to go to my weekly lesson, my mother mentioned that I could soon start learning to play the organ at the church. I looked at her with incredulity. My immediate response was: “Then I’ll quit!” To which my mother responded: “You’ll regret it!” I felt threatened and came back with: “I might regret it, but I’ll never play the organ at church!” I knew only too well how many hours had to be spent playing at the church while the choir practiced. And who would always be popping in to see the ladies but the depraved priest that had raped me a few years earlier! Even more troubling was when the priest accepted my mother’s invitation to dinner that Easter. It was difficult to sit across the table from that man, knowing that he was held under such esteem by my mother, while I was still under his threat not to tell or my family would be punished.

Although music and religion have intertwined since ancient times, from when temples were built to maximize the impact of sounds and song to when many musical artists attribute their talents to early song worship, religion always strikes a sour chord for me. It brought me nothing but grief as a child and continuously presents divisiveness on our planet. In a world where freedom is of concern to us all, what about the religious freedom of children? Despite all the physical and psychological efforts by the religious conditioners in my early life, I’m glad that I was able to see through the hypocrisy and rationally decide for myself about the notion of God.

On the positive side, my experience set me on a spiritual search for meaning in my life. It wasn’t until I started working with my spirit that I finally understood that the ultimate goal of every human should be to personally attain harmony with their spirit.